CZ Minutes: Lowsec Doomsday

Nidenon Oct 12, 2014ShareTweetAs Greyscale hinted and Fozzie confirmed, CCP are looking at enabling Doomsday devices in lowsec. The ability to fire a DD was briefly available at the release of the Dominion expansion, but removed in a hurry by CCP, and this is the way it has been since then.Fozzie explained that this is something CCP have been wanting to revisit for a long time and gives Phoebe as the perfect time to do it.Reactions from the community have been mixed so far, but if any median is to be discerned, it would be that DDs should be allowed, but that supercapital ships should be traditionally tackle-able (perhaps combined with giving them warp core strength of 5-6), alternatively making heavy interdictors more than useless in other situations than simply for tackling supers (thus giving them other reasons to be flown in lowsec).Combined with the power projection nerfs in Phoebe it becomes a complicated question to ponder. What benefit would there be to DDs in lowsec? Should there be any counter-balance as mentioned above? Is it simply too prone to exploitation by powerful groups to crush the little guy?Apoth: Fishing in LowSec just got a lot more interesting. Given that DDs can only shoot capitals, your standard roaming gangs aren’t going to notice much of a difference, but with the lack of bubble, ~theoretically~ drive-by DDs are going to be much easier than in Null. Having said that, there will now only be a greater cache of HICs stored in LowSec systems to take advantage of those bold enough to drop their Titan(s). The next Asakai is going to be “Fucking Cool”.
Niden: I think it’s good that DDs make a return to lowsec, especially in tandem with the nerf to power projection. However I don’t believe in removing the point immunity of supercapitals. Instead I would advocate for giving heavy interdictors a secondary role, much as regular interdictors are excellent anti-frigate platforms because of their DPS and speed. The idea behind this line of thinking is to make the hictors slightly more interesting and popular, so that people actually have them around.
Just as long as we don’t get bubbles or bombers in lowsec. Null can keep that, thank you.
Hendrick: My only experience with a Doomsday is when I accidentally blew up a PL titan on Singularity while testing. The guy was AFK too. This is a trauma I will live with for the rest of my life.
Xander: Not gonna lie – what I know about Doomsdays you could write on the back of an envelope. From chatting to people on the likes of the CZ Skype channel, people seem cautiously optimistic about this and that’s a good thing as far as I am concerned. I do agree about keeping bubbles out of lowsec.
Cilvius: I am ok with CCP removing this restriction, as it seems odd to keep the limit that was imposed only because doomsdays were AOE weapons in the past. I don’t know if removing the point immunity is the best idea, I think that would just discourage the use of supers too much and their use might already shrink a bit with the jump changes. I’m all for giving another role to HICs though, they are handy ships but I feel they could be much more useful. You wouldn’t need to be able to point supers if HICs were more worthwhile to fly, you would probably have a couple of pilots wanting to fly them rather than just being told to.
And as Niden said, no bubbles or bombs in lowsec. Ever.
Blackhuey: I’m all for removing nonessential gameplay restrictions. To be honest, I didn’t realise until this news broke that you couldn’t use DDs in lowsec; that’s above my paygrade and I’ve traditionally experienced lowsec as “that bit between my nullsec home and Jita” or somewhere to bait overconfident leet PVPers with a cyno Stabber. But the combination of this change and force projection nerfs should see more numerous and interesting midsize fights in lowsec, and my ghostrider training will hopefully pay off soon.
Tags: cz minutes, doomsday, lowsec, phoebe, Titan